


deep trees sleep

by redlight



Series: monsterfuckers inc. [7]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Adult Link (Legend of Zelda), Asphyxiation, Blood and Gore, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drowning, Frottage, Horror, Mummification, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-penetrative rape, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rutting, Surreal, Survival Horror, Temporary Character Death, Victim Kills Rapist, Video Game Mechanics, Violence, goo mummification, save file mechanics, saves and resets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:34:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24445897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlight/pseuds/redlight
Summary: Link doesn't have the mental room to think about monsters.Or, vignettes from a undying hero.
Relationships: Link (Legend of Zelda)/Others, Link/Monsters, floormaster/link, link/likelike, monsters/link, redeads/link
Series: monsterfuckers inc. [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1400176
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	deep trees sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HidingInYourShadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HidingInYourShadow/gifts).



> this fic features temporary major character death, and i have decided to add the major character death archive warning just to be safe.

**Forest Temple ( +0 )**

The stress in his braincase manifests as a beast, wearied and wild. Link doesn't have room for it.

See, Link fights monsters. He has no room for demons in his head. As much as his nightmares would love to stalk through the weeds and reeds of his mindscape, there is simply no space for them. No time.

He's lost seven years in the span of a few minutes. Time has no worth to him anymore.

So there is no use dwelling on nightmares and screaming nights. There is no use sleeping more than his body has to. He fights. He slashes. He hits. He repeats. He rinses. He repeats. It's routine.

And though the Forest Temple rings with Saria's words and song, and though the sky tints red with smoke from Hyrule Castle, he has no room in his mind to shift focus. He stays on his path. He stays determined.

His stomach growls. Link's arms shake with exhaustion. His callouses pop and bleed against the hilt of the Master Sword. If he cannot master the bloodflow of _himself_ , then to master the bloodflow of monsters—well, what's the difference.

No. No room for that.

He walks on shaking legs. His back aches and weights with supplies. The Forest Temple sings, and she sings, and she sings.

He needs a godsdamn break, is the thing. A gulp of potion isn't quite soothing the ringing in his ears, and the twisting-turning of hallways isn't quite helping the migraine blossoming behind his left eye. He walks. He walks. He walks.

Monsters fall with skill and practice. Lizalfos are a challenge but Link is no stranger to challenge, not anymore. He's spent all his years in challenge. He's spent all his years alive, after odds.

Link tries not to shiver when he enters the next room. Towering, lonesome—high ceilings and vaulted floors. His gut wrenches and the ulcer in his stomach whines pathetically. His teeth grip the bloodied edge of his lip. He does not want to be here, but there is no room for want. So he enters.

Link's hair stands on end like trees stiffened in a thunderstorm, but he forces himself to breathe slow, silent, sanguine. He reeks, he knows. It's how creatures can sniff him out, if they're able. He reeks, and he shuts his eyes, hoping they will not scent him.

He does not have room for hope.

Inhale sharp, exhale soft. Calloused grip against his sword, tightened fist on the strap of his shield. He walks. He walks. He walks.

The Temple sings.

The ceilings are far too high, overgrown and toxic. He walks. Walks. Heavy boots with well-made buckles clinking and clanking. His sound is a giveaway. His reek is a signal to all afar. He walks.

And though his gut twists and turns more than the temple does, Link cannot quite rebalance himself. There are monsters to fight, there are people to be saved, and there is no room, no room, for the _pitter-pattering_ of _something something something_ , coming from all corners of the room.

He holds his breath.

When he releases it, _it_ strikes.

It flattens him to the ground, shrieking, snarling, living in his ears, and Link struggles to gasp in a dying breath. His vision stammers and fails, his lungs shudder and heave, and his guts bleed out in _pieces pieces pieces_ , and he dies.

Rinse, repeat. Restart.

**Forest Temple ( +1 )**

The Forest Temple isn't as difficult to fight through the second time around. Twist, turn, rotate. Link's boots clack on brick and concrete, and his teeth are too busy chewing on gumbark that some vendor in Kakariko sold to him for much, much more than what it's worth. It staves off the nervous lip-tremor-biting habit he's seemed to have developed.

His restarts don't exactly come as a shock to him. The Goddesses want him alive, don't they? Link chalks it up to time being worthless again.

When he gets to the room he died in last time, he's more ready than before. Not so worn down, not so trembling-terrified, not so confused. Not hungry, because he hunted down a fat rabbit and roasted it over the fireside just in the dawning hours of morning. He's stable. He's confident, as confident as a pawn can be.

...That's pessimistic. No room for pessimism.

Link sticks close to the walls with arrows in reach and sword even closer, and he clinks, clanks, clinks, clanks his way down the twisted hall. Pitter-patters are audible, but the shadows from above capture his attention more—he moves, he moves, and—

The creature lands where he once stood, and Link snarls and slashes out of reflex.

It's a Floormaster, and its nails are overgrown and gnarled, black from dirt and decay. It swipes at Link's chest and he will not die this time, he won't, he swipes and slashes and seizes his shield up—

It brawls against him, skittering-scattering, clink-clank of nails against the stone-paved ground, harsh and heavy, harsh and heavy, Link can't catch his breath he doesn't have time _no time no time no TIME—_

**Forest Temple ( +2 )**

Rinse, repeat.

Restart.

He doesn't bother feeding himself. Townsfolk avoid him when he gets this look on his face, and he doesn't miss their company. Epona whines as he leaves her outside the Temple in a relatively safe clearing by the Lost Woods, close enough for the faerie kids to hear her.

He draws his sword and walks into the Temple.

He does not. Have. The time.

(All he _has_ his time, but—that's irrelevant. Link is frustrated.)

Maybe it's a blessing, maybe it's luck, maybe it's destiny, that the monsters never remember Link. So he gets an edge on the Floormaster, shoves the damned thing back with his sword held in trembling fingers, _hack-and-slash-and-hack-and-slash_ , that's what he's best at, right—right?

Link hasn't been operating at full capacity. He's been bested before, numerous times, over and over again. He keeps dying but he keeps waking up too—so this has to end sometime, he knows that, it has to end when he defeats Ganon, the Goddesses will make sure he won't fail until then—

Right, right, right—

The Floormaster is faster than Link expects it to be. Its skin, graying and corpselike, makes a crinkled, horrid sound with every skitter-scatter-spider movement. Its curled nails clink-clank on the concrete in tandem with his boots, and he—

He doesn't expect for a fingernail to take his knees out, all too heavy, all too wrong. He can't scream as he feels the crinkled gray skin press against his mouth, and he—

He struggles, he struggles, because he will wake up again and he is too tired, he wants to rest, he can let go and close his eyes and feel death in the pit of his stomach and the void of his soul but it's a reflex he can't train himself out of. Link, champion of Hyrule, hero of _timetimetimetimetimetime_ , can't train himself out of it on his own life, maybe it's a joke and maybe the Goddesses grin with fingernail teeth—

He stutters out a panicked breath, tastes salt on his lips and a cool chill on his face where his cheeks are wet, he's crying, the hero is crying isn't he—

But the Floormaster isn't moving anymore. It's still.

Link gasps out another breath, heaving and hurting. The thing's body—is it even a body? It is bone and mangled flesh on the molding hand of a giant, stretched to extremes, stinking of rot, clasped around his body like he himself is a prize. Link wheezes desperately, trying to kick his feet out, trying to reach for the sword that's been knocked off just out of his damned reach—

The hand clasps tight around him, still, unmoving, just—burning. Hot with corrupt magic, whirring and pulsing against his own sweat-slick skin. Horribly, horribly, as Link tries to struggle in its grasp and kick and flail—his groin is pressed too flush with the monster. He's half-hard from adrenaline, feral from fighting, and it's not the first time it's happened by far—but he should be dead by now, why isn't he dead, _why isn't he dead_ —

Link gasps and ruts against the Floormaster, a whimper rising high in his throat.

He wants—he wants, he _wants_ , there is no room for want he's trained himself out of that but the beast needs to _LET HIM GO HE WANTS OUT—_

His breathing is rising and falling faster, tidal restraint breaking, and with every push-pull of struggle he unwittingly ruts against the monster's horrid pseudoflesh again and again.

He should give up. It's the easy way out. He can try again later, he can try again later, _ALL HE HAS IS TIME ALL HE HAS IS TIME ALL HE HAS IS TIME IS TIME IS TIME IS TIME IS TIME IS NOTHING ELSE_

Keratin-claw digs into his flesh, his leg, and he screams in the back of his throat, loud and breaking. he screams and screams as the claw severs an artery or perhaps the whole limb, and the friction against his clothed cock is too much and he—

He comes, from sheer relief, horror, nausea. Bile flutters a storm in his stomach as he sobs. The Floormaster wanders away, sated, as soon as his pulse stops.

Rinse, repeat.

**Castle Town ( +0 )**

Stones clatter in his ribcage as his boots clink against the paved path of Castle Town.

Fingers clasped around his sword hilt. Blood drained from his face, sunk all the way down to his aching toes. Eyes tired, wincing, frostbitten from the sunlight. The town smells like rot and dust. The town smells like mourning.

He's familiar with all the collapsed structures and hunched figures. Link woke up here, after all—emerged from the Temple of Time into a world of horror. He woke up here. He's been trying to get used to it.

Link is good at avoiding Redeads. It's a habit, it's built on practice. Death after death he gets better at avoiding it, but when he clunks past a narrow alleyway that's usually empty, reset-after-reset-after-reset has it empty—

Well. He wasn't cautious enough. He wasn't aware enough.

The Redead tries to lunge at him from the darkrot alley, dead eyes and rancid reek sinking through to Link's breathing pipes, to the branches of his lungs. He chokes, stumbles to the side before he's caught in its ever-tightening grip, and he rushes forward to slash it.

The Redead loses an unseeing eye, cankerous flesh hanging off the clean slice of zygomatic bone underneath. Eye socket empty, arms outstretched until Link takes hold of his sword with both hands and forces it into its chest, between the monster's ribs, until he's _sure_ he nudges the blade against a hard ridge of spine and can't cut any further.

Link twists the blade. The monster becomes more lifeless, falling totally limp, guts and gore like a theater show in the middle of town. Sticking his sword into the thing was a bad idea, Link is starting to realize, because he tugs and the blade is caught between ribs and locked into vertebrae, stuck in its carnage, and—

He can't pull it free fast enough. His struggle has attracted more Redeads, lumbering and sloping on their decaying feet, and he can't help his flurry of cursing as one tackles him, flinging them both far away from reach of his rib-stuck sword.

He hates these, the Redeads, his deaths with them—this one has scars across its triaged face, almost human-looking, ravaged. It forces an odor of sour milk into his watering eyes, wraps dead fingers around Link’s heaving throat. Its limp limbs tighten around Link's waist, and he’s forced against the bricked pavement harsh and heavy.

His skull cracks against stone. His vision blurs and blares, accompaniment to the tinny screams in his fragile ears. The Redead drags him up by his hair, pulling at the roots hard, and _slams_ him down again.

There are more Redeads. They stare at him, as much as they can stare, lifeless and unconscious. Link wheezes and tries to claw at the hands on his throat, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, _he can't—_

_Breathe—_

Moths shriek inside his lungs. Link's cheeks are cold, wet now. His eyelashes stick together, and the dirt ridden in the city sidewalks are clinging to his sweat-soaked skin. He can't breathe. He can't breathe. He can't _move_.

The monster raises Link's head up above the brick. It slams him back down, claws digging into the skin of Link's neck. Skin is pierced, hot blood gushes from pinprick wounds, dribbling down into Link's tunic. He can't breathe. His throat is broken.

The Redead ruts against him, hands cold and fluid, and Link phases out on brick town pavement.

**??? ( +3 )**

Rinse, repeat, his daily routine.

**??? ( + 37 )**

Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.

**Fire Temple ( +5 )**

The worst of his deaths is this—the gelatinous ooze of a Like Like encasing his whole body, his lungs tarred together and his ribcage contracting. Link can't move, can't breathe—

He's restrained, he's always restrained whenever he dies like this—but the Like Like's slime is all over his shaking body, and Link can barely see through the gristle and grime, his eyes stinging.

Gooey mucus slips down his throat, his nostrils, and Link can only cough—it won't get _out_ and he keeps trying to flail and slash and stab but it's _not working_ it won't let him _go_ usually they let him _go_ —

His skin is gummied up and burning, clinging to the creature's innards, as though he could be digested just from this—but he inhales another gasp of ooze and can't _shriek_ for the sudden pain in his lungs, bursting, breaking—

He can't _burst out_ , it won't let him _go_ —

Link growls, pathetic and weak, and tries to tear the ooze apart with his dirtied, broken nails—it doesn't work well, but the monster gurgles around him, disturbed enough to retch him up and spit him out _finally_ —

He hits the ground hard, feels lava-heat flowering around him as his heat-resistant tunic has been torn and half-corroded from the Like Like's gooey digestive acid, his skin still burning and his guts still turning and he coughs and coughs and coughs up everything inside him—

His fingers are stuck to his sword, the flesh of his fingertips glued down to the metal, melted together, and it is a part of him now—his destiny has always lied with the Master Sword, hasn't it? Or it's the Goddesses' favorite cosmic joke, but either way—Link bites through his bleeding lips and takes his skin-grafted sword and slashes into the Like Like with all his Goddesses-damned might.

The Like Like collapses under the pressure from the cut, its membrane popping with a horrid gooey sound and its whole body coagulating into a rancid mess.

Link spits out more blood and ooze from his aching mouth, his sore throat. He gets back on his feet and collects his bearings, wipes his mouth off with the back of his corrosive-burned hand.

So far as repeats go, this has been a success. Link is getting better about holding onto silver linings.

**Hyrule Castle ( +8 )**

He digs the guts out of his teeth and the splinters out of his sword-arm, but his other hand clenches tight to Zelda's. The air is shimmering and reeking of change. They've done it, haven't they? They've done it, and instead of a reset, everything will be normal, won't it? Link isn't sure, Link can't quite breathe, because if he _breathes_ and it _changes_ and time doesn't go back to—

.

.

.

.

.

**Kokiri Forest, after everything ( +0 )**

A young boy named Link awakes in his bed, reaching for a sword that isn't there. His mind blinks and blurs with old shadows and night terrors. His body is whole, and his wounds are not here.

Link climbs down his treehouse and goes to meet his best friend Saria, humming the tints and tunes of the forest.

He doesn't know why, but he has forgotten something. And yet his world feels peaceful, and the beasts clinging to his mind have wandered away.


End file.
